7.) The affirmative’s representations of terrorism are a symptom of moral complicity in death—the act of running the advantage to win a debate round stagnates the idea of terrorism, magnifying the real-world impact through the proliferation of images of fear. This makes it impossible for them to access case.
Baudrillard ‘03 The Man, The Myth, The Legend
(Jean, October, “The Mind of Terrorism”)
All the speeches and commentaries made since September 11 betray a gigantic post-traumatic abreaction both to the event itself and to the fascination that it exerts. The moral condemnation anti the sacred union against terrorism are directly proportional to the prodigious jubilation felt at having seen this global superpower destroyed, because it was this insufferable superpower that gave rise both to the violence now spreading throughout the world and to the terrorist imagination that (without our knowing it) dwells within us all. That the entire world without exception had dreamed of this event, that nobody could help but dream the destruction of so powerful a hegemon-this fact is unacceptable to the moral conscience of the West, and yet it is a fact nonetheless, a fact that resists the emotional violence of all the rhetoric conspiring to erase it. In the end, it was they who did it but we who wished it. If we do not take this fact into account, the vent loses all symbolic dimension; it becomes s a purely arbitrary act, the murderous phantasmagoria of a few fanatics that we need only repress. But we know well that such is not tie case. Without our profound complicity the event would not have reverberated so forcefully, and in their strategic symbolism the terrorists knew they could count on this unconfessable complicity. It goes well beyond the hatred that the desolate and the exploited-those who ended up on the wrong side of the new world order-feel toward the dominant global power. This malicious desire resides n the hearts of even those who've shared in the spoils. The allergy to absolute order, to absolute power, is universal, and the two towers of the World Trade Center were, precisely because of their ideaticality, the perfect incarnation of this absolute order. Countless disaster films have borne witness to these fantasies, and the universal appeal of the images shows just how close the fantasies always are to being acted out: the closer the entire system gets to perfection or to omnipotence, the stronger the urge to destroy it grows. When the world has been so thoroughly monopolized, when power has been so formidably consolidated by the technocratic machine and the dogma of globalization, what means of turning the tables remains besides terrorism? In dealing all the cards to itself, the system forced the Other to change the rules of the game. And the new rules are ferocious, because the game is ferocious. Terrorism is the act that restores an irreducible singularity to the heart of a generalized system of exchange. All those singularities (species, individuals, cultures) that have been sacrificed to the interests of a global system of commerce avenge themselves by turning the tables with terrorism. Terror against terror-this is no longer an ideological notion. We have gone well beyond ideology and politics, The energy that nourishes terror, no ideology, no cause, not even an Islamic one, can explain. The terrorists are not aiming simply to transform the world. Like the heretics of previous times, they aim to radicalize the world through sacrifice, whereas the system aims to convert: it into money through force. Terrorists, like viruses, are everywhere. There is no longer a boundary that can hem terrorism in; it is at the heart of the very culture it's fighting with, and the visible
1NC Terrorism [Heaton/Mancuso] (3/3)
[CONTINUED]
fracture (and the hatred) that pits the exploited and underdeveloped nations of the world against the West masks the dominant system's internal fractures. It is as if every means of domination secreted its own antidote. Against this almost automatic from of resistance to its power, the system can do nothing. Terrorism is the shock wave of this silent resistance. It is a mistake, then, to characterize this as a clash of civilizations or of religions. It goes well beyond Islam aria' America, on which one aright be tempted to concentrate in order to create the illusion of a confrontation resolvable by force. There is a fundamental antagonism at work. but it transcends the phantom of America (which is perhaps the epicenter though not the incarnation of globalization) as well as the phantom of Islam (which likewise is not the incarnation of terrorism). This is the clash of triumphant globalization at war with itself. In this sense, it is accurate to speak of this as a world war-no: the third but the fourth-and the only one that is truly global, since what's at stake is globalization itself. The first put an end to European supremacy and to the era of colonialism; the second put an end to Nazism; and the third to Communism. Each one brought us progressively closer to the single world order of today, which is now nearing its end, everywhere opposed, everywhere grappling with hostile forces. This is a war of fractal complexity, waged worldwide against rebellious singularities that, in the manner of antibodies, mount a resistance in every cell. These confrontations are so imperceptible that it is occasionally necessary to resuscitate the idea of war by staging spectacular scenes such as those in the Persian Gulf and now in Afghanistan. But World War IV happens elsewhere too. It haunts all expressions of world order, all forms of hegemonic domination-if Islam were dominating the world, terrorism would rise up against Islam. The globe itself is resistant to globalization. Terrorism is immoral. The occurrence at the World Trade Center, this symbolic act of defiance, is immoral, but it was in response to globalization, which is itself immoral. We are therefore immoral ourselves, so if we hope to understand anything we will need to get beyond Good and Evil. The crucial point lies in precisely the opposite direction from the Enlightenment philosophy of Good and Evil. We naively believe in the progress of Good, that its ascendance in all domains (science, technology, democracy, human rights) corresponds to the defeat of Evil. No one seems to have understood that Good and Evil increase in power at the same time -and in the same way. The triumph of one does not result in the obliteration of the ether; to the contrary. We tend to regard Evil, metaphysically, as an accidental smudge, but this axiom is illusory. Good does not reduce Evil, or vice versa; they are at once irreducible, the one and the other, and inextricably linked. In the end, Good cannot vanquish Evil except by denying to be Good, since, in monopolizing global power, it entails a backfire of proportional violence. In the traditional universe, there remained a balance of Good and Evil, a dialectical relationship that guaranteed, for better or worse, the tension and equilibrium of the moral universe. This balance was lost as soon as there was a total extrapolation of Good-the hegemony of the positive over every form of negativity. From that moment, the equilibrium was broken, and Evil returned to an invisible autonomy, increasing exponentially. Relatively speaking, this is a bit like what happened to the political order after Communism disappeared and neoliberal forces triumphed worldwide. It was then that a phantom enemy arose, percolating throughout the planet, rising up through all the cracks in power. Islam. But Islam. is merely the crystallized form of this antagonism. The antagonism is everywhere, and it is in each of us. Hence, terror against terror. But it is asymmetrical terror, and it is this asymmetry that leaves the absolute global power disarmed. It can do nothing but strike at its own rationale for the balance of power, without being able to compete on the playing field of symbolic defiance and of death, having deleted that playing field from its own culture. Until now, this integrating power had succeeded in absorbing and reabsorbing every attack, every negativity, and in doing so created a thoroughly hopeless situation (not only for the wretched o' the earth but also for the privileged and well-to-do in their radical comfort). But the terrorists have started using their own deaths offensively and effectively, based on a strategic intuition, a sense of their adversary's immense fragility, of the system's quasi-perfection, of the explosion that would erupt at the slightest spark. They succeeded in turning their deaths into an ultimate weapon against a system devoted to the ideal of zero losses. Any system of zero losses is a zero-sum game. And all methods of deterrence and destruction can do nothing against an enemy who has already turned his death into a counteroffensive weapon. (" Who cares about the American bombing! Our men are as eager to die as the Americans are eager to live!") Thus the imbalance of more than 3,000 deaths inflicted in one fell swoop against a system of zero losses. Here, everything depends upon death, not only upon the brutal irruption of death live and in real time but upon the irruption of a death much more than real: a symbolic and sacrificial death-which is to say, the absolute, ultimate, unappealable event.
Baudrillard ‘03 The Man, The Myth, The Legend
(Jean, October, “The Mind of Terrorism”)
All the speeches and commentaries made since September 11 betray a gigantic post-traumatic abreaction both to the event itself and to the fascination that it exerts. The moral condemnation anti the sacred union against terrorism are directly proportional to the prodigious jubilation felt at having seen this global superpower destroyed, because it was this insufferable superpower that gave rise both to the violence now spreading throughout the world and to the terrorist imagination that (without our knowing it) dwells within us all. That the entire world without exception had dreamed of this event, that nobody could help but dream the destruction of so powerful a hegemon-this fact is unacceptable to the moral conscience of the West, and yet it is a fact nonetheless, a fact that resists the emotional violence of all the rhetoric conspiring to erase it. In the end, it was they who did it but we who wished it. If we do not take this fact into account, the vent loses all symbolic dimension; it becomes s a purely arbitrary act, the murderous phantasmagoria of a few fanatics that we need only repress. But we know well that such is not tie case. Without our profound complicity the event would not have reverberated so forcefully, and in their strategic symbolism the terrorists knew they could count on this unconfessable complicity. It goes well beyond the hatred that the desolate and the exploited-those who ended up on the wrong side of the new world order-feel toward the dominant global power. This malicious desire resides n the hearts of even those who've shared in the spoils. The allergy to absolute order, to absolute power, is universal, and the two towers of the World Trade Center were, precisely because of their ideaticality, the perfect incarnation of this absolute order. Countless disaster films have borne witness to these fantasies, and the universal appeal of the images shows just how close the fantasies always are to being acted out: the closer the entire system gets to perfection or to omnipotence, the stronger the urge to destroy it grows. When the world has been so thoroughly monopolized, when power has been so formidably consolidated by the technocratic machine and the dogma of globalization, what means of turning the tables remains besides terrorism? In dealing all the cards to itself, the system forced the Other to change the rules of the game. And the new rules are ferocious, because the game is ferocious. Terrorism is the act that restores an irreducible singularity to the heart of a generalized system of exchange. All those singularities (species, individuals, cultures) that have been sacrificed to the interests of a global system of commerce avenge themselves by turning the tables with terrorism. Terror against terror-this is no longer an ideological notion. We have gone well beyond ideology and politics, The energy that nourishes terror, no ideology, no cause, not even an Islamic one, can explain. The terrorists are not aiming simply to transform the world. Like the heretics of previous times, they aim to radicalize the world through sacrifice, whereas the system aims to convert: it into money through force. Terrorists, like viruses, are everywhere. There is no longer a boundary that can hem terrorism in; it is at the heart of the very culture it's fighting with, and the visible
1NC Terrorism [Heaton/Mancuso] (3/3)
[CONTINUED]
fracture (and the hatred) that pits the exploited and underdeveloped nations of the world against the West masks the dominant system's internal fractures. It is as if every means of domination secreted its own antidote. Against this almost automatic from of resistance to its power, the system can do nothing. Terrorism is the shock wave of this silent resistance. It is a mistake, then, to characterize this as a clash of civilizations or of religions. It goes well beyond Islam aria' America, on which one aright be tempted to concentrate in order to create the illusion of a confrontation resolvable by force. There is a fundamental antagonism at work. but it transcends the phantom of America (which is perhaps the epicenter though not the incarnation of globalization) as well as the phantom of Islam (which likewise is not the incarnation of terrorism). This is the clash of triumphant globalization at war with itself. In this sense, it is accurate to speak of this as a world war-no: the third but the fourth-and the only one that is truly global, since what's at stake is globalization itself. The first put an end to European supremacy and to the era of colonialism; the second put an end to Nazism; and the third to Communism. Each one brought us progressively closer to the single world order of today, which is now nearing its end, everywhere opposed, everywhere grappling with hostile forces. This is a war of fractal complexity, waged worldwide against rebellious singularities that, in the manner of antibodies, mount a resistance in every cell. These confrontations are so imperceptible that it is occasionally necessary to resuscitate the idea of war by staging spectacular scenes such as those in the Persian Gulf and now in Afghanistan. But World War IV happens elsewhere too. It haunts all expressions of world order, all forms of hegemonic domination-if Islam were dominating the world, terrorism would rise up against Islam. The globe itself is resistant to globalization. Terrorism is immoral. The occurrence at the World Trade Center, this symbolic act of defiance, is immoral, but it was in response to globalization, which is itself immoral. We are therefore immoral ourselves, so if we hope to understand anything we will need to get beyond Good and Evil. The crucial point lies in precisely the opposite direction from the Enlightenment philosophy of Good and Evil. We naively believe in the progress of Good, that its ascendance in all domains (science, technology, democracy, human rights) corresponds to the defeat of Evil. No one seems to have understood that Good and Evil increase in power at the same time -and in the same way. The triumph of one does not result in the obliteration of the ether; to the contrary. We tend to regard Evil, metaphysically, as an accidental smudge, but this axiom is illusory. Good does not reduce Evil, or vice versa; they are at once irreducible, the one and the other, and inextricably linked. In the end, Good cannot vanquish Evil except by denying to be Good, since, in monopolizing global power, it entails a backfire of proportional violence. In the traditional universe, there remained a balance of Good and Evil, a dialectical relationship that guaranteed, for better or worse, the tension and equilibrium of the moral universe. This balance was lost as soon as there was a total extrapolation of Good-the hegemony of the positive over every form of negativity. From that moment, the equilibrium was broken, and Evil returned to an invisible autonomy, increasing exponentially. Relatively speaking, this is a bit like what happened to the political order after Communism disappeared and neoliberal forces triumphed worldwide. It was then that a phantom enemy arose, percolating throughout the planet, rising up through all the cracks in power. Islam. But Islam. is merely the crystallized form of this antagonism. The antagonism is everywhere, and it is in each of us. Hence, terror against terror. But it is asymmetrical terror, and it is this asymmetry that leaves the absolute global power disarmed. It can do nothing but strike at its own rationale for the balance of power, without being able to compete on the playing field of symbolic defiance and of death, having deleted that playing field from its own culture. Until now, this integrating power had succeeded in absorbing and reabsorbing every attack, every negativity, and in doing so created a thoroughly hopeless situation (not only for the wretched o' the earth but also for the privileged and well-to-do in their radical comfort). But the terrorists have started using their own deaths offensively and effectively, based on a strategic intuition, a sense of their adversary's immense fragility, of the system's quasi-perfection, of the explosion that would erupt at the slightest spark. They succeeded in turning their deaths into an ultimate weapon against a system devoted to the ideal of zero losses. Any system of zero losses is a zero-sum game. And all methods of deterrence and destruction can do nothing against an enemy who has already turned his death into a counteroffensive weapon. (" Who cares about the American bombing! Our men are as eager to die as the Americans are eager to live!") Thus the imbalance of more than 3,000 deaths inflicted in one fell swoop against a system of zero losses. Here, everything depends upon death, not only upon the brutal irruption of death live and in real time but upon the irruption of a death much more than real: a symbolic and sacrificial death-which is to say, the absolute, ultimate, unappealable event.